109900-under-attack-yet-again
Content ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- | |} ---- |} | |} ---- ---- ---- They announced in it, you guessed it, Twitter. Carbine's weapon of Choice: https://twitter.com/Cougardc/status/502532492448919552 | |} ---- This. Funny thing is, "apparently" this complaint does NOT go into General Forums. I had no sooner posted and it was either moved or deleted. Didnt waste a minute of time, yet they cant respond with a simple statement. | |} ---- Ahhh, but of course. Maybe I should be sending my monthly sub to them? I DO NOT use social media. If THAT is the only way to get answers initially I think you're shooting yourself in the foot. | |} ---- Haven't you heard? YouTube Streamers are all over Twitter and since they play the same flawless game the Devs play, all updates go thru Tweets because apparently explaining to your consumer base in more than 140 characters is anathema. | |} ---- I know EXACTLY what they are doing by using twitter. Pretty hard to complain etc with a character limitation. You may think its brilliant NC but its insultingly obvious. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I actually logged in a couple of minutes ago with no problem whatsoever ... :S .. but GW2 is having the same issue for me .. so i guess the thing is attacking NCSOFT directly instead of just Carbine. But i don't know what i'm talking about .. so ... please explain! | |} ---- Nah, this is pretty rare, actually. They might not have admitted it (or they just really don't know) but they're being attacked from outside. The only other time I can remember this was on launch day - and that wasn't an ATTACK so much as a bunch of impatient asses who wrote scripts to try and beat the queues ... then they ended up clogging traffic for hours. | |} ---- ---- ---- I'm really starting to hate that Carbine isn't posting ALL the relevant information on the forums. We always have to go looking for it on YouTube, twitter (official WS and devs themselves), reddit etc..... It's really starting to annoy me. | |} ---- You would be a very wise consumer. | |} ---- Why can't they use the forums? :( | |} ---- Signed. ( I tried responding when you first posted this, but someone is really on the damage control right now. Kept saying I couldnt post on this topic. Turns out they moved it before anyone could utter a word.) | |} ---- Sadly, they've been pretty clear that they aren't going to change. They like being about to blast out short, to the point Tweets. There are also a lot fewer Twitter-users than Forumites - and they tend to be most interested players and less aggro about things. While I would like more information posted here, I've given up caring. I'd rather wait for someone who cares enough to post than be forced to participate in the hellholes of Twitter or Reddit. | |} ---- ---- ---- I understand it's convenient to the Devs just to tweet it, but it's rather not for the players. I think I'm going towards the non caring point as well :( | |} ---- ---- Uh ... that is probably the most inaccurate statement I've read all day. :blink: The *worst* part about the Twitter thing is you honestly have to subscribe to like a half-dozen different people. Cougar has his own, Wildstar itself has one, each of the Studio heads have one and THEY ALL post information without anyone bothering to consolidate it anywhere. It's very "modern" but VERY VERY unprofessional. | |} ---- ---- ---- Ok let me rephrase. As i stated, it needs to be more localized. And as a restate, no one that is relevant uses twitter. Its a social media built around tweens that have an addiction to constantly knowing what their favorite celebrity is doing at every moment of every day. No one over the age of 21 has a twitter account. And those that do, used it once. Realized what it really was. And never logged in again. Who the hell cares what everyone you know is doing at every moment? Regardless, localize the information on the forum, where everyone is guaranteed to see it. Not just the 16 year old girls. | |} ---- There is an expression for that and it's "digging yourself deeper". Despite my complete indifference for Twitter, I have to admit it's used by everyone, including big companies. | |} ---- ---- You do realize that a majority of the time, the website server is also down. So they couldn't post it if they wanted to. Twitter is a work around to inform the playerbase of what is going on. They have been slacking today on updates for some reason though. By the way, it is some kids DDosing again. If you get mad at Carbine for that, then you beyond ignorant. Any company or website can be DDos'd by a 10 year old. There is not too much you can do to prevent it from happening. VPN's, Tor, and BotNet rule the world. | |} ---- So are you a troll, or are you really that unaware of the demographics of twitter? Honestly in a situation where network connectivity is the problem, using alternate servers such as facebook and twitter are actually a very good idea. Often the official forums go down, as they did last night. | |} ---- | |} ---- The NSA. lols :3 edit (to add something constructive): Sure, secondary sources are a great idea in case the forums are down or (A)DDoS'd. Buuuut otherwise, the use of their forums would be nice. Hell, just a copy/pasta from what they would normally tweet would be fabulous. | |} ---- and when the servers get attacked and you can't access the forums? | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- They first two pages of this thread are filled with people screaming "Carbine sucks, lol quit.", those are the posts I'm referring too. Though it may be because they are mistaking an attack for actual server issues. As I understand it, it's pretty common practice to adopt a stance of information blackout when getting DDoSed. This is because there isn't a whole lot to report outside the obvious "servers are down dudes". It also doesn't fuel the flames, by denying the attackers the satisfactions of re-tweeting all your "servers are FUBAR" posts with the hope that they just lose interest. Its not very satisfying for us, but they think it helps. | |} ---- I appreciate that they are using Twitter as a way to keep us informed, if their forums and game are being attacked, at least they can respond through another venue. Plus my tweets come to me instantly. I say keep up the good work, and Carbine is trying!!! This game absolutely rocks!!! They will continue to fix problems as best they can- but a DDoS is out of their control. | |} ---- ---- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YiYBoeci7k | |} ---- ---- | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Does your car dealer/manufacturer give you compensation if some assholes pour sugar into your tank? | |} ---- ---- Most cars have built in security on the tank holes now. Same should happen here. And I'm a huge fan of Wildstar and Carbine. | |} ---- No that's covered by insurance, a service that I pay for. | |} ---- ---- Okay, but there was no compensation even when that wasn't the case in the past. :P The post I replied to implied that the mere unavailability of service already entitled him to compensation. Regardless of who was at fault. Which I disagree with. Whether attacks like this can be reasonably prevented is beyond my knowledge, and apparently not everyone agrees on the subject. And that's relevant to the analogy.... how? | |} ---- ---- And where exactly are you getting your information seeing as they have stated so far they don't know the problem. Alarms going off at the NOC etc. Sounds more internal to me. They have had no problem at all letting people know when its DDOS... | |} ---- ---- They've more or less said it's ddos attacking without saying it. Cougar responded to one of my tweets when I mentioned the DDOS attacks. It's been a rough day :( I think they've learned their lesson in giving the attackers the attention they want. | |} ---- Even to the point of blaming a DDOS attack at launch, when it was really a bunch of impatient jerks running scripts to beat the queues. :P | |} ---- Pops! Where ya been? Moms wants you home for dinner! | |} ---- ---- Well, your analogy was flawed and sucked, so I merely answered your question in a reasonable manner. If something happens to my car outside of warranty, I pay insurance for comprehensive coverage in the case of vandalism. Because I pay them for a service, they take the risk of vandalism, not me. I don't ask Honda to fix my car, I ask my insurance to pay for the damages. That's a better analogy for you. Further, after browsing the ToS, it seems that I am not entitled to any refund or compensation. However, many services do provide credit / some form of satisfaction when they are unable to meet the service they usually provide. It is not uncommon for service providers to credit / compensate in the event of service interruption be it at their fault, or an outside factor. They do this to mitigate customer dissatisfaction in hopes of retaining the customer for this and any future service interruptions. Thanks for your snarky remark, but your input toward my question is no longer needed and I'd appreciate it if you'd add me to ignore like I'm doing to you now. | |} ---- It has nothing to do with the game code. They just flood NC Soft's pipe with so much data it can't respond to legimate requests because it's too busying processing all the incoming junk. The admins eventually get it filtered but the attackers are constantly changing the attack to bypass those filters and flood the incoming internet connection. | |} ---- ---- ---- It's a DDos, and the names are out there. Additionally, they don't need to say they are doing, and NCSoft doesnt need to confirm it, to know what it is. Use the internet and learn what DDos'ing is and how to know when it is happening, then maybe you will understand a bit more. | |} ---- ---- They've been hinting at it without outright saying it. I don't think they want to give the script kids the satisfaction. Most likely the game servers all poll how many people are concurrently connected at any givin time. When this gets low and hits a set threshhold it notifies admins something is wrong (because no one is playing) and they have to investigate why that is. They probably also have external sources that check server connectivity and notify admins if things fail to investigate from the outside as well. | |} ---- | |} ---- ---- Probaly to gain noteriety in their circles and prove they can take down big targets. | |} ---- and then what? kill themselves? | |} ---- It's essentially just trolling on a larger scale. These people generally have lots of free time as well. | |} ---- Oh, we couldn't get that lucky. | |} ---- ---- They're trolls, for lack of a better way to describe them. | |} ---- ---- ---- You better tell that to the guy on Twit-Space who's taking credit for it, then. | |} ---- ---- Yes maybe every company with major server hubs should buy a RioRey and make all those people who DDoS rich since they obviously invented it lol. Sad how people in this world make money but its the reality of things. You would be surprised how we as consumers are forced to ...consume......no im not a conspiracy theorist. >.< "Get people sick, get rich by inventing the vaccine" | |} ---- I posted more because it does a nice simple job at explaining how DDOS and Botnets are used to attack servers. It just so happens to be a RioRey ad as well. Maybe for all we know, the script kidde is actually the CEO of RioRey xD | |} ---- Wow, you just gave me a great idea. Time to go start an insurance company for MMOs... | |} ---- ---- ---- Could be worse, could be kids who just want to spam their cooldown-free attacks non-stop at the AH. | |} ---- It could be just an act of vandalism, or someone doing it for their own "intellectual challenge", but it's more likely for ransom or revenge (any number of banned accounts, bots, etc.). I surely get emotional when I'm banned from anything, I'm sure some really lose their heads~ | |} ---- Sure we do! I play GW1and GW2, ohhh right they are targeting NCsoft...I guess I could go play Mario Galaxy on my Wii....... | |} ---- ---- ---- This has always been one of my biggest complaints about the dev team. I have this image in my head of Cougar going "LOLZERZ! Forumz?! That's old school! Look kids, I'm tweeting, I'm cool. Look how hip the dev team is! LOOK AT ME! Millennials please like us!". They just expect the people that really care about the game to consolidate that info and tell the rest of us. | |} ---- That's kind of a silly way to look at it in my opinion. | |} ---- Not so much, no :) The reason I use twitter instead of forums for things of this nature is pretty simple; during these types of malicious attacks - the forums are unreachable. Not to mention that I'm very often not at my desk when this stuff happens. Twitter is FAR easier to post while on the move, between cubes of the guys working their butts off, while in a meeting, and generally it's just suited far better to *my* style of communication when this type of thing happens. One of the other things that I do is to coordinate internal emails (also easier to use than the forums when on the move) to make sure that the community team is involved and informed so that they can update the community in the ways that they've decided to do so according to their team policies. Ultimately though, talking about malicious attacks is a very delicate balance. If we acknowledge the Bad Guys, that feeds them. Not to mention we can't really talk about what we are doing, as they are watching us as much as you are. If we tell YOU what we are doing, we are effectively telling the Bad Guys the same things. I'm trying to find the balance between enough transparency (acknowledging connectivity issues) without feeding the ego's of those doing the malicious activities. It's also a very fluid thing, as soon as we implement a counter measure, and we see concurrency rising and services restored, they can do a thing on their side and get around the blocks we put in place and then we have problems again. It's a game of cat and mouse (or as I like to put it a Cold War of constant escalation and action/reaction). Even when the attack subsides or we stop it, we are still dedicating multiple resources for hours afterwards to monitor, research, and continue working on future countermeasures. I'm sorry that our players have been on the receiving end of these malicious attacks that have impacted our service, and those of other industry leaders in gaming, and I'm sorry that one of the most effective defenses we have in these battles is to not talk about it at all. I know we haven't gotten this balance right, but I know that I'm still working on it (and I suspect the Community Team is as well). | |} ---- ---- It's the other way around. | |} ---- I agree on the Twitter thing. As far as the other point, I can't agree so readily. What I don't like is to get the "whole picture" I'd need to use Twitter, Reddit, Facebook... I don't even know if there are others. What if someone at Carbine still uses MySpace? :D I mean, props for interacting, but it's too scattered. Often I find out about things because someone else read it somewhere else and reposted it to the forums. My suggestion would be to at the very least have someone on staff keeping this stuff reposted to the forums in a consistent manner. Let THEM follow the social media and when something of relevance to the community at large is posted, they can repost it here. (In a single "Tidbits from around the Nexus" topic, perhaps) | |} ---- Thanks Cougar. We appreciate the work you put in. My stepfather was an Oracle DBA and was on call one week a month in case anything went wrong anywhere in his company's architecture. That week, he'd lose sleep, wouldn't be able to eat with us, there's always something going on. May the bastards rot in Hell for forcing you to come into the office intentionally to deal with their shit rather than just when a network issue pops up, and thanks for working as hard as you can to keep the servers up and online. This attack was a lot less gnarly than the last ones. | |} ---- ---- ----